Friday, January 12, 2018

A Tale of Two Years

Year 2017 was wrapping up to leave its current place in the domain of
time for Year 2018, before it left, Year 2017 had to communicate and
convey some messages to Year 2018. Here is how the conversation went:

“Oh sis, it was so painful to see and witness what humans
were doing to one another. It was painful to witness how old men in different
parts of the world were chained to their seats of power; they didn’t want to
give their place to another. Many of my other sisters witnessed the same old
men who never wanted to let someone other than themselves rule and govern,
especially in the continent of Africa. Can you believe it. For instance, in
Angola, the man called De Santos ruled during the life of 40 of my older
sisters, until they forced him to leave his place for his defense minister, not
only that but in a country, not far from there called Zimbabwe, where one old
man was glued to the seat of power during the life of 36 of my elder sisters.
They witnessed his crumbling regime taking the country and the people of
Zimbabwe down the drain. I’m the only one to see him be removed and forced out
of that power seat. Similar case in Libya, Gambia and Senegal, during a guy
called Abdullahi Wad. Another guy in a
country called Uganda wants to remain in power for life, like most of the
African leaders, but the worst is in Eritrea. Where the ruler not only wanted
to remain in power but also wants to dismantle the country, and for those who
have a problem with that he built many and many prisons more than the number of
schools and hospitals combined. His main goal is to kill and force the youth to
flee the country making out of them the second largest refugee population
seeking asylum in Europe after Syrians. A whole generation is being lost,
either to war with neighbors, or forced labor or through imprisonment or
through forcing them to flee out of the country to exile. Eritrean youth have
no future in the country. When anyone finishes 11th grade they will
be taken to the military base in Sawa to do the national undetermined forced
labor. Once they reach to Sawa they discover the shocking reality. They
discover that they were being robbed of their future, of their dreams, of their
dignity and humanity in general. They discover that the regime wants only to
destroy them as a way to destroy the country by depriving it from a whole
generation. They discover that the system is being built in a very refined way
to break their sprit and to make them give in to the new reality. They know
what that means, so they start to either resist and end up in inhumane prisons
that are built to de-humanize human beings or to flee across the border to
either Sudan or Ethiopia and in the process, many lose their lives by getting
shot by the security forces of the regime who are under order to shoot down any
fleeing person. Some eventually make it across thinking that it is a safe haven
but it is just the starting of a new phase of a different cycle in their long
journey of torture and miseries. When they cross the border fleeing for their
safety some fall in the hands of human traffickers which means that they become
a commodity in the hands of the traffickers, they can sell them to other
trafficking groups or they buy out their own freedom by paying a ransom amount
of money or engaging their relatives to help paying the ransom. The luckiest ones end up in refugee camps in
either Sudan or Ethiopia from where another phase of their sad journey starts,
knowing that they did not sacrificed their life by crossing the border just to
be sitting down in refugee camps which don’t provide the minimum of anything
they are just like concentration camps. They might wait for a few weeks before
they start to hit the road for the Sahara Desert aiming towards Libya and for
that they require a lot of logistical preparation but still some don’t make it,
and for so many different reasons, either the car will break down or they run
out of water or they get lost in the desert or they simply get stuck or for
many other reasons. As for those who make it to Libya they need to start for
the next phase of their journey by getting more logistical help from their
relatives in Europe or somewhere else. During that time, some fall into the
hands of the different rival armed groups and again they are exposed to human
traffickers who want to sell them or simply try to make money out of them.
Again, only some who are the luckiest ones will make it to the boats to start
their journey across the Mediterranean Sea to Southern Europe during which some
don’t make it for so many reasons either the boat would be very old or would be
overcrowded or would get capsized because of other reasons. Many will not make
it across to Europe, thousands every year and the number keeps growing. For
those who make it to Europe, they have to deal with a new type of struggle, a
struggle with resettling themselves in the new societies, it begins with so
many new challenges. Challenge of language and communication, challenge of
getting proper accommodation, challenge of weather and challenge of health
especially overcoming the trauma of their long journey and whatever happen
during. It is a real challenge to overcome the suffering and the agonies of
their journey starting from Sawa to Europe. Everyone who went through that
journey is a victim of some sort or lost something on it, either their life or
part of their own self or their mind or arriving and crossing the sea but
ending up being totally traumatized. No one is a winner in that journey the
journey of terror, the journey of different phases and cycles of terror, they
escape one to fall into other.

Oh, sis, it is sad to witness the
suffering of those young men and women. I hope during your life time you will
see the end of the one who is causing their pain and suffering.”